tiny sneakers

Where oh where to start. This little cutie pie is FOUR months old. Sometimes it seems like January was yesterday; other times it seems like it was a lifetime ago.

I get an absolute kick out of watching his little personality come to life and seeing all his funny faces.

This hasn’t been the easiest month on anybody. Parts of it were really great- KB has got that smiling thing down, and no one can get a belly laugh out of him like daddy. When he smiles at you, there is absolutely nothing in the world that could possibly be wrong at that moment.

On the other hand, the reflux is back. We thought we were out of the woods when I regulated my milk supply, but the reflux has reared it’s ugly head again in a big way.

Basically that means mom and baby are doing anything but sleeping. It’s horrible to watch your baby in pain and not be able to fix it with hugs and kisses, a lesson I’m sure I’ll learn more than once on this journey. The biggest problem has been that the reflux wakes him up and makes it hard for him to go to sleep. I don’t want to dwell on the not sleeping part. I know his health issues could be much more significant and I’m eternally grateful this is all we’re dealing with. There’s no way to make the situation pretty- we’re exhausted. As in more exhausted than when he was a newborn. But we’re fighting for answers and treatments and one day we’ll sleep.

I hate pumping my baby full of drugs, but we’ve tried everything else. We added a medication last week and we’re seeing a pediatric GI specialist this week. Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of this soon. It’s so hard to read about babies the same age and younger sleeping and napping like champs. I’m extremely happy for those moms, but it’s hard. On the bright side, we’re not experiencing the dreaded 4 month sleep regression- we have nowhere to regress to!

Ok enough of that-on to everything else. The little stinker bug is eating like a champ still, every 2 hours around the clock. He checked in at 14 pounds at his 4 month check up, putting him in the 41 percentile. He’s a shorty pants though- 23 inches, 8%ile. What length he does have seems to be in his legs- he’s just about popping out of 6 month clothing that has legs. We can still get away with some 3-6 month onesies though.

Though he figured out how to roll over at 2.5 months, he’s had enough of that. He’s moving on to other things! {Or just too tired…}

He so desperately wants to crawl, he just has no idea how to make it happen. When he’s on his belly he kicks his legs like a wild man and scrunches them up under himself; he doesn’t know what to do next though.

In big exciting things this month… we got the little bubs a Jumperoo! I never imagined I’d buy one of these things- I’ve heard horror stories about how it affects development, but that seems to be more so with the jumpers that hang from the doorway. KB looooves to stand and bounce, and he hates laying down. This seemed like the perfect solution. {I stuck him in one at the store one day and he instantly LOVED it. Of course I had to get him one.}

My sweet little boy’s eyes are still as blue as ever, although some days they look a little more gray. We wonder every day what color they will end up. Poor guy also started losing most of his baby hair- all but the very bottom,giving him that crazy baby old man hairdo. Each morning when I pull him out of the crib, I see a sad little pile of baby hair left behind on the sheet.

Speaking of cribs, we did make some progress with the whole sleep thing. While he only naps for about 30 minutes at a time, he’s able to do it in his crib. It makes me so sad for him to not be in my arms anymore, just like I thought it would. However, he makes getting him up from his nap that much sweeter- I love seeing his outstretched arms pop out of the swaddle.

One of my favorite moments of the day is when he’s just woken up from a nap and he’s still a little sleepy- he wraps his little arms around my shoulder and nuzzles his head in my neck as we come downstairs. Which leads to my next favorite moment, one I know I will miss with a passion when he gets older- nursing.

I always thought it was strange when people said how much they loved the bonding experience of breastfeeding, but now I understand. It’s the one moment of the day {ok, 8+ moments of the day} when he lets me cuddle and hold him and doesn’t squirm away or cry. Sometimes he just stares back at me, and sometimes he laughs and forgets he’s supposed to be eating. How could I not love it?

Other special skills acquired this month:

Drooooooling

Babbling! We’ve got the oohs and ahhs down and we’re working on the goo goo gah gahhs. He’s got the “guuuuuh” sound down nicely. I humor myself by saying mama maa ma ma repeatedly to him. Occasionally I slip in a dada or a papa.

We have hands! Bubba finally found his hands. It started with him reaching for the toys hanging over him on his play mat, which eventually led to him grasping some of his toys between his hands. He’s most recently started putting his hands and everything else {especially my hand} in his mouth.

The husband and I both laughed in childbirth class when the nurse told us one of the reasons babies cry is because they’re bored. “What does a baby have to be bored about?!” Ha, shows us- this little bugger hates to be in the same place or do the same thing for a long time. He must have new and exciting things! Luckily that makes venturing out a little easier- he gets so enthralled by all the newness that he doesn’t make a big fuss.

One thing he still absolutely loves? Bath time! Especially in the big tub.

That was an excessively long update, but a lot happens in a month! I’m leaving a million things out I’m sure. A month flies by with the blink of an eye, but it seems like such a long time in baby world- so many new things happen.

Previous months:

1 month

2 months

3 months

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I’d planned for the babe’s 12 week update to be the last weekly post, but that was 2 1/2 weeks ago and it’s still not up. So monthly it is.

The bug’s 3rd month has been quite the rollercoaster ride. We started the month with screaming. Lots and lots of screaming. The little guy was still in pain and nothing we seemed to do would fix it. He’d gotten a little relief from the reflux meds, but it still wasn’t enough.

Finally, around week 10, we got somewhere. Apparently I had an oversupply of milk. It sounds like a good thing, but it’s quite the opposite. A super condensed overview: there are {sort of} 2 kinds of breastmilk- foremilk and hindmilk. Most of what comes out first is foremilk. It’s thin and watery and packed full of lactose {milk sugar}. It’s affectionately known as “skim milk”. The “cream” is the good stuff: the fatty milk that comes mostly at the end of a feeding, filled with the goods that help the most with brain growth and development. An oversupply meant the little guy was getting almost all foremilk. He’d fill up and be done eating before he got to the good stuff. That meant his stomach was full of sugar; it didn’t satisfy him for long and it made him uncomfortable.

When I finally got my supply regulated it was like a switch had been flipped. We saw smiles and rolls and wide open eyes.

While that was wonderful, it came with an interesting change of events: even.less.sleep. What we thought was poor sleep turned into horrible sleep. We’re talking as little as 20 minute stints all night long. Sometimes we get to 1-2 hours and we cheer. Sad. Needless to say, we’re really tired around here. Grateful for a happy babe during the day, but we still have a ways to go at night.

We thought we were getting somewhere with sleep by the end of month three: the little guy slept from 8:30 to 3. I was up all night staring at the monitor and creeping into his room convinced he’d stopped breathing. He hadn’t.

For exactly 2 days we thought we’d hit that elusive 3 month mark…the one where everyone says things get better. Then we went on our first road trip and simultaneously got struck with a family cold. Our little snuffleupagus has spent the last 2 weeks with a runny nose and congestion. Luckily there’s no fever and it’s been a pretty mild cold {more like seasonal allergies, but apparently a baby can’t get those yet?} Needless to say, sleep is once again down the drain.

Despite the lack of quality night sleep, our little peanut is growing like a weed and changing so much so fast! He’s not really a little peanut at all anymore. Around 12 weeks he was a whopping 12 pounds 8 ounces. Weight officially doubled before 3 months.

He’s just starting to realize he has hands. Well one hand anyway. He can hit his hanging toys, although we’re not sure yet whether it’s intentional or an accident. The best part is he’s started cooing and squeaking and “talking” to himself.

We all thought we’d have things more under control by now but it mostly just feels like we’re going backwards. Three months of severe sleep deprivation has a way of building up. Winking smile So for now we’re just taking things one day at a time, crossing our fingers for a couple hours of sleep and focusing on the smiles and laughs we’re getting during the day.